EPBOT Readers discussion

Hello,

I am posting very late for week 46 or a bit early for week 47, so this will be a combined post. The US Thanksgiving holiday weekend got away from me. I hope everyone in the US celebrating had a great weekend. We were with our youngest (adult) child and some friends. So a small celebration for us.

The (non-fiction) book I am reading for my neighborhood book club isn't that interesting to me. It is The Last Baron: The Paris Kidnapping That Brought Down an Empire. The book jumps all over the place. The initial kidnapping part was fairly interesting. It happened in 1978 in France. I have no memory of it (I was a teenager then and did watch news). I do recall the Patty Hearst kidnapping. In any case, the book jumps to the background on the kidnappers, then to the victim's ancestor. Those parts are less interesting to me.

I then started another non-fiction (recommended by Rebecca last checkin) Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage. This I am very much enjoying! This is my kind of non-fiction. It is very difficult to read the kidnapping book when this is sitting there too. Every woman should read it. The fact that so much of this knowledge about the female body is so recent blows my mind. I recommended it in a menopause FB group I'm in too. Thank you Rebecca.

I am still listening to The Sunbearer Trials for this FOE selection. I have 5 chapters left and it is getting near the end. I have found it getting more interesting as the story goes on and I am interested to see how it ends. I'll save my thoughts for the discussion thread there.

QOTW:
I have two this week, since it is a double week post!
First, we are approaching the end of the year. Are you on track for whatever, if any, goals you set for yourself? Have you met them and are reading solely for pleasure? Or are you still working toward them?

I don't set firm goals myself. I have tried to fill in the Book Nerds spreadsheet as I have read books. I "double dip" to see how many prompts I can fill even if I use a book for multiple prompts. With audiobooks I've read a lot more than in the past.

Second, per Dani's post last time, do you have any 2023 Book Nerd prompt suggestions?

I liked this year's (and last year's) prompts. I have no specific suggestions although I don't mind repeats from previous years to carry forward if it makes sense. I have filled in 77 of the prompts so far with 34 different books.

In my spreadsheet, even with counting a book toward as many prompts as it fits, I have struggled with the continents (only NA and Europe filled in) as well as Humor and Comedy (I don't know what that says about me! Maybe I'm way too serious).

Three reads for me last week:

The Tombs of Atuan (re-read) for my other GR group's series read of the Earthsea books. It was my favorite of the series the first time I read it (which was waaaaaay back in high school or college) and re-reading it made it my favorite all over again, although I have a TOTALLY different perspective on the story, now that I've got a few more decades of life experience under my belt.

Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? And other Questions about Dead Bodies, since so many folks here had recommended it (I used it for the "recommended by someone else doing the challenge" prompt). It was as much fun as a book about dead bodies can be (and if you read and enjoyed it, I highly recommend Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, which is one of my favorite nonfiction reads of all time).

Karamo: My Story of Embracing Purpose, Healing, and Hope, to continue in my quest of reading books by the Queer Eye fab five. I love Karamo, but his book wasn't quite as well written as Jonathan's or Tan's. Antoni apparently does not have a memoir, but he's written a few cookbooks that I will have to pick up. Nothing from Bobby, alas! (anyone else as obsessed with Queer Eye as I seem to have become?)

Now I've started The Farthest Shore to continue with Earthsea.

QOTW #1: I'm doing pretty well on the Book Nerds challenge. I am being stubborn about using only one book per prompt, even if it could fit in multiple places, because...I don't know why. :) It just doesn't feel right to use a book more than once! I am having to get creative in using somewhat dubious connections for some of my recent books though - I may have to give up on the idea of fitting every book into an unused prompt and have a few that I just list at the end, promptless ;)

QOTW #2: I posted some suggestions on the FB page. I don't remember what they were though!

Hi, all! Hope the holiday went well for all of you. We didn't travel for Thanksgiving, but we were busy cooking Thursday, and Friday we have our "Xmas bomb" - we set up our trees and all our decorations. Between that and NaNoWriMo, I was busy, but I still had a few finishes.

Finished:
Ocean's Echo - 4 stars - I really enjoyed this M/M sci-fi romance.

Even Though I Knew the End - 4.5 stars - a sapphic hard-boiled detective story with magic, set in 1940s Chicago.

Cursed - 3.5 stars; I had the same problem with book 2 that I had with book 1: I enjoyed the story in the end, but it was so meandering. I suspect it could've been more tightly plotted, and about 100 pages less, and might have felt a bit better paced to me.

Comics & manga:
The Ancient Magus' Bride: Wizard's Blue, Vol. 5
Cat + Gamer, Volume 2
The King's Beast, Vol. 8
Komi Can't Communicate, Vol. 21

Currently reading:
A Snake Falls to Earth - I'm only about 25% into this. It's cute so far, looking forward to seeing how the two story threads come together.

Planned:
Tread of Angels
Illuminations
Well Traveled

QOTW:
#1 - I have finished my Goodreads goal, which I wound up bumping to 200 books this year! (TBF, a lot of those are short comics and manga.) I also completed the Popsugar challenge, and, completely by accident, I managed to fill all the prompts for the ATY list as well. So right now, I'm just reading whatever I feel like.

#2 - I actually deleted my FB account earlier this year, so I'm unfortunately no longer active in communities over there. I don't really know what to suggest, except maybe some stuff related to '23', for the year 2023. Someone in the Popsugar group has a whole list of related prompts she'd come with, and it's really an interesting idea.

I had a successful Thanksgiving: I ate too much and met the tiny nieces.

A Prayer for the Crown-Shy - I would say this was as good as the first book but a bit less intense. (I only almost cried.) I feel like we could use a third book to bring some closure, but I have no idea whether the author intends to write one.

Elatsoe - I snuck this in at the end of Native American Heritage Month. I was a little worried because I had seen it listed as both YA and middle grade, but it read more like the latter to me: the protagonist is 17, but apart from the fact that she can drive, she could easily have been 5 years younger. It's not really my favorite genre, but I enjoyed it.

Like, Comment, Subscribe: How YouTube Drives Google's Dominance and Controls Our Culture - This was really well done. A journalist covers the entire history of YouTube in mostly chronological order. I feel like I've been watching YouTube forever, but so many of the big stars through the years really passed me by, and I knew very little about the workings of it all. Fascinating stuff.

QOTW: I am once again goal-free except for trying to actually mark everything as read. I think I have found two in the last two weeks that I missed, so not doing super great on that front. This group is helpful because I can search for the titles and figure out at least what week I read them.